Despressing Stuff

Somedays you look at these charts and get depressed, I mean look at it...

Two and a Half Men, a rerun at that, is pulled out for it's 10th showing in the space of a week and equals the new hit World's Strictest Parents

This stellar performance does nothing for the lead out which more than halves the audience, if Australia's Perfect Couple teaches us anything - it's that no-one likes perfection.

The Librarians and Tara stumble badly - in fact the trend this week seems to be audiences deserting post 9.30 shows left right and centre, a worrying trend given there's no holidays, good weather or ashes to pin the blame on.

Law & Order UK continues the hex on Ten's Wednesday night - remember when Ten owned Wednesdays with The X Files, and then again with The Guardian, and then again with House? They desperately need a boost on this night - Celebrity Masterchef at 7.30 might do them some good - but as we can see in various spots on the grid - the lead-ins mean nothing.

Over at 7pm - the 7pm Project seems to have settled on a stable number now - though there's problems with it, mainly the beating it's taking in demos against Seven and Nine in the slot - Ten needs to find a hook to promote the show because despite the content having improved the ratings have not (although they have at least stabilised).

Criminal Minds is one of a handful of shows doing well whether it's new or rerun, also NCIS and Two and a Half Men fit this bill, but check back in two years for the inevitable erosion when not even new fasttracked eps will break a mill - that's my prediction

See - it's easy to look at the results and get depressed...

The way back to prominence

Three days in one shot due to yours truly being flat out on his day job :D So what can we learn from Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Mostly they've been pretty consistent for a few weeks now, Nine tanks on Tuesdays, Ten tanks on Wednesdays and Seven tanks on Thursdays.

The Librarians took over the 9pm Wednesday slot from the Chaser and posted it biggest Audience ever on Wednesday sandwiched between Spicks and Specks and United States of Tara (now a bonafide hit I think).

Commercial clip shows are well and truly dusted, Nine's pathetic attempt to induce an audience to watch commercials in between more commercials never got off the ground, despite the best efforts of the host to cram in as much unneccessary swearing as humanly possible into each cross.

Jamie Oliver, once the ABC's (and then Ten's) golden boy - is also dusted, with an even smaller aud than Nine's lackluster commercial show the night before! I don't know whether Oliver is still popular back in Britain but in Australia at least he's well and truly out.

There's always a way back to prominence though - as illustrated by Axle Whitehead, the host of World's Strictest Parents, a BBC format which has bolted out of the gate to become the current hot show, a few years ago Whitehead was on the outer having disgraced/pwned (depending on your age group) during the 2006 ARIA awards, he got fired from his Video Hits hosting gig and it looked like the end of the road - but since then he's stormed back with top ten singles, a role on Home & Away and now this show - who woulda thunk it! Reflecting on this - I don't think we'll be counting old Kyle out just yet!

Double Take and TV Burp are still in the doldrums but Seven is likely to support them for a while yet - on Thursdays they're interested in young viewers and seem more willing to take a knock on this night compared to other nights.

Not sure how long Nine will be supporting Australia's Perfect Couple for though, when you're only marginally more popular than Commercial Breakdown - you have real problems, I should also point out this is umpteenth show featuring Jules Lund that seems to have fizzled out - maybe you need to work on him, he's a bit too cheerful and nice - maybe have him look to the career path of the now successful Whitehead - Nine has the AFI's in December and god knows they could use the publicity...

End of Story

OK - Channel Ten - now would be a good time to panic!

The 7pm Project - 3rd night in experienced a massive drop night on night shedding 18.55% night on night and 31.98% on the premiere two night ago. This is a bad result.

Of course we've seen shows rise and fall on the strength of other shows on their night, and as it stands - Wednesday is not Ten's strongest night.

The Simpsons was the only thing keeping the dream alive for Ten with both episodes scraping in over a million, also Neighbours has some how chiselled out a big following for itself this year parlaying the gravitational pull of Masterchef into what has been a reportedly compelling storyline which has kept viewers with the show - a good result.

But this good news was completely counteracted by what's going on after 8.30.

Law & Order SVU is tanking, the show is a veteran - it's been on our screens since 2000, and arguably it's heyday was in 2003/04 when it gave ER a hiding in the 8.30 Thursday slot, that was the ratings peak and as hard as it is to keep viewers with a serial, it's even harder to convince the aud that's deserted a procedural that they haven't all seen it before - especially when it's main competition is a darker, sexier beast in the form of Criminal Minds.

Even worse is the result for House. The show is still a top draw in America - but ever since the cast was diluted with an extra 3 people they've struggled to hold the interest of Australians.

I think Australian audiences have a good sense of when a show jumps the shark, at least American shows, shows like Murphy Brown, The X Files, Lois & Clark, Beverly Hills 90210, NYPD Blue all vacated primetime very soon after they stopped being relevant. This phenomena still doesn't explain why crap like Getaway or The Footy Show continue unabated, but perhaps Australians are blind to their own shortcomings.

Of course these are just House reruns and scuttlebut says Ten is trying to bed down the timeslot in preparation for September, but an unwavering figure under 600k speaks for itself - the audience has moved on. End of Story.

Elsewhere Nine continued to embarrass itself through bad experiments with reality, this time Australia's Perfect Couple, I'm not even going to give that shit oxygen.

Seven meanwhile didn't pull 1.8 million (The Aud for the sneak peek), but did almost as well with Strictest Parents which gave them the night in overall terms.

ABC dominated the 8.30 hour but The Chaser is well away from its best figures, with next week being the final episode for the series I'm curious to know if ABC will give it any publicity or if the audience will even care?

Finally ACA had one of those rare wins over Today Tonight, again thanks to one of their big ongoing stories this year, the weight loss journey of Magda Szubanski, now if only we can all lose our collective memory of Magda Funny Bits we'll all have something to celebrate!

Share the wealth

Been busy the last few days so only time for a quick round up of the action.

We find on Saturday, Sunday and Monday each of the networks getting a turn at winning.


Nine shrewdly took out Saturday and by extension the preceding week by scheduling a last minute tribute to Michael Jackson, both Seven and Ten were locked into sporting commitments giving Nine the upper hand with a more flexible schedule to respond to current events.


On Sunday it was Ten’s turn to shine, mostly thanks to Masterchef, not only the show itself but booking one of its stars (Matt Preston) to guest and leaving him till late in the show ensured a massive turnout, one of Rove’s biggest ever and certainly the biggest this year. I’m interested to see whether the Masterchef crowd liked what they saw and whether they’ll stick around in the following weeks.

Monday night Seven showed some flexibility with a Michael Jackson special of their own – this one produced before the singer’s death in support of his upcoming UK tour, while held down in the 7.30 half hour by Masterchef, after 8 it rated it’s socks off delivering big blows to Recruits and Australian Story (though Nine’s Big Bang theory was actually a vast improvement on their previous week’s ratings at 8pm) and ensuring a staggering 1.8 million people witnessed an extended promo for The World’s Strictest Parents, making the 2 minute short the top show of the night, that’s a hard debut to top whenever that show bows!